Watch YouTube inside of Google Reader

Steve Rubel posted about an announcement from Google that he calls "significant." I think he could be guilty of understatement, but let his words speak for themselves.

Earlier this week Google made a significant change to Google Reader. You can now watch videos from dozens of sites without having to leave the reader. This means you can set up a RSS search feed, from say YouTube, and watch them all as a playlist in reader.

What Google didn't mention is that if you have the Google Reader widget on your Google Personalized Homepage you can actually watch all of these videos right within the page itself.

Page views? What page views? If no one is actually visiting your site, how do you monetize and sustain your business model? Creating meaningful social media metrics will be quite a challenge in this age of feeds, where content can be stripped of much of the branding, advertising or even authorship by a feed browser like Reader or Sage. I think it's about influence. At least, that's what some wiser blogging heads than I seem to believe.

Update: I subscribed to the most viewed feed from YouTube and then zipped over to Reader. Sure enough, the embedded Reader widget on my Google homepage now will pop up a window with a YouTube video embedded and playable within it. Cool.

Google Screams Happy Birthday, Edvard Munch

My favorite holiday logo switch yet, though there have been some strong contenders over the years. It was fun to look back through the Google holiday logo archives.

Blogger Beta

I was finally offered the opportunity to switch today.

I shouldn't be this excited but can't help it. No more publishing. I can finally tag label posts. Widgets are easy to add. I can feature RSS feeds. And it's all tied neatly into Gmail, GoogTube, Calendar, Reader and the rest of the emerging Google online ecosystem.

I may have to delay my exit to WordPress for a few more months after all.